The purpose of the study is to analyze and consider how nurses' low back pain relates to their job stress.

Questionnaires are given to 768 clinical nurses working in four general hospitals.

The results are as follows: A group of people with serious pain reported significantly higher scores for depression. It was significant negative correlation between depression and "low self-esteem" "difficult task" "lack of enthusiasm for work".

The more nurses have various tasks and hard work, less enthusiasm for work, and low self-esteem, the more they tend to get depressed. That they tend to get depressed related to serious low back pain. Therefore, it is significant to provide mental support for nurses in order to measure against low back pain.

In order to clarify the attitudes toward policies in the field of nursing and health care among nursing professionals, and to identify the factors that strengthen the interest of these professionals in these policies, a postal survey was conducted using a self-administered questionnaire. The subjects of the survey were nursing professionals (nurses, public health nurses, midwives, licensed practicing nurses) in Japan, and valid replies were obtained from 5,602 respondents (57.6 %).

1. Approximately 80 % of the respondents expressed interest in nursing and health care policies. Interest tended to be greater among the more senior nursing professionals, among those in administrative positions, and among those who had attended lectures or seminars on nursing and health care policies. To the question on what acted as the motivating factor for their interest in nursing policies, the most frequent reply was, "reports of malpracrtices by the mass media", followed by "I was faced with problems in the medical workplace."

2. Only 60% expressed intertst in the decision-making process before the promulgation of nursing policies. When asked why they had no interest in this decision-making process, more than half of the respondents cited the fact that they "weren't given any information" about the policy decision-making process.

3. The primary sources of information on nursing and health care policies were the mass media, the Japanese Nursing Association and "word of mouth"; however, 80 % of the respondents felt that these sources did not provide adequate information about nursing policies.

4. More than half of the respondents answered that they did not take nursing policies into consideration when voting in the elections. This main reasons were as follows; "there were other hot political issues", "I did not know which candidates were supporting nursing".

5. It was speculated that lack of information about nursing policy or the attitude toward nursing of each candidate also influenced their voting behavior, and this was remarkable in the younger group.

6. When the right or wrong information disclosure about the attitude toward nursing of each candidate was asked, 54.4 % agreed and only 2.1 % disagreed.

7. In order to strengthen interest in nursing policies among nursing professionals, the courses on nursing and health care policies must be made a mandatory part of the nursing curriculum, and the number of opportunities for practicing nurses to study policy must be increased. In addition, the results of the surver suggest that a reliable system needs to be developed and maintained for disseminating the latest news regarding nursing health care policies and the policy decision-making processes.

This study has two purposes, 1) to determine reaction types of nurses toward the change and the change levels of the working environment in middle of change, and 2) to define characteristics of nursing leadership styles as first level managers in this study setting. Applying Funakawa's data (6 types of reactions toward the change) as referral, the study with an original questionnaire was conducted at two patients care units at an acute care hospital. In order to determine change levels of the working environment, the results derived from this study with 51 stuff nurses were compared to the referral. The characteristics of nursing leadership styles were found by directly asking what kinds of behaviors they preferably follow to their nurse leaders. The result (response rate 96 %) showed that the working environment was in time of active change since the group of innovative nurses accounted for 83.7 %. The most important characteristics of the nurse managers' leadership styles were to show professional practice and guidance, and to give coaching based on the evidence as excellent. As a result, this study suggested that nurse managers must apply creative on-the-job training manner rather than simple instructive on-the-job training manner.